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CloudCamp Federal 2008 – Don’t miss out !!!
Tickets are going fast for CloudCamp Federal 2008 on November 12th in Chantilly, Virginia !! Representatives from the following organizations are already registered to attend. 3TERAAmazon Web Services (AWS)AOLAppistryApptisBooz Allen…
Private Clouds
Yesterday in eWeek, Chris Preimesberger, provided a very good read in “Why Private Cloud Computing is Beginning to Get Traction“. “Private cloud computing is a different take on the mainstream…
Important Cloud Computing Events
Mark your calendar for the following cloud computing events. These are specifically targeted to organizations looking to leverage cloud computing technologies and techniques in support of national security requirements. CloudCamp…
Forrester: Embrace Cloud Computing to Cut Costs
“Forrester Research advises CFOs to take a close look at cloud computing for messaging and collaboration and enterprise applications. The payoffs could be noticeable during the current economic downturn.” In…
Government still wary of cloud computing
Federal News Radio interviewed Ron Markezich, a corporate vice president of Microsoft, Mike Bradshaw, president of Google federal, and Michael Farber, a partner with Booz Allen on the government’s approach…
Microsoft Azure
With the announcement of Azure, Microsoft has finally made it’s cloud computing plans public. Maybe Larry Ellison is now ready to revise his opinion, huh? While this announcement is definitely…
Federal Grants from the Cloud
In case you mised it, the Department of Interior has announced that it plans to build a cloud computing platform to manage the processing and distributing of government grants. “Grants.gov…
Economist.com : Let it rise
This week, The Economist provides an insightful special report on cloud computing. From “Clouds and Judgement“: “Computing is fast becoming a “cloud”—a collection of disembodied services accessible from anywhere and…
Some More Cloud Computing Survey Results
As promised, here are some more results from the MIT/”Cloud Musings” on-line survey! Please remember, THIS IS NOT A SCIENTIFIC SURVEY !! The purpose is only to get a sense of…
Steve Ballmer comments on Microsoft’s cloud plans
On October 17th in the “Redmond Channel Partner Online”, a Microsoft Partner community publication, Kurt Mackie reported on Microsoft’s CEO Steve Ballmer’s comments on the company’s vision for syncing up…
A couple of weeks ago, I was offered a chance to meet Mr. Vivek Kundra at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building in downtown Washington, DC. Needless to say, I was honored to be given the opportunity. Although I was clear on my own views of how the Federal government could use cloud computing, the Obama administration’s plans were, at that time, anything but certain. What a difference a week makes !!
As has been widely reported, the President’s 2010 Budget submission has firmly set cloud computing as a “key tool for improving innovation, efficiency and effectiveness in Federal IT. The GSA has emphasized this edict by releasing a request for information (RFI) for Infrastructure as a Service offerings. This rapid and fairly decisive course change to the way Federal IT will be procured in the future can potentially change an entire industry. Looking at what has happened in the financial and automotive industries, this could also be seen as the administration flexing its muscle yet again in order to set the direction of a crucial component of the US economic system.
So now, with a little over a week before my meeting with Mr. Kundra, what do I talk about? Since the administrations direction has now been set, there’s clearly no need to discuss cloud computing as the right direction for Federal IT. Not being a political pundit or economic advisor, I will definitely stay away from the debates around government influence over the commercial sector. So as a technologist, I will stick to my knitting and discuss what technologies the coming GovCloud implementation will be able to leverage going forward.
If you have any suggestions for me, I would be happy to hear about them. The only thing I ask is for your recommendations to be focused on general technologies, industry standards or open source approaches. Please, no specific commercial products or specific technology implementations.
Of particular interest to me will be those technologies, standards or approaches that are “shovel ready”, and available for pilot implementations today! As outlined in the budget, “… pilot projects will be implemented to offer an opportunity to utilize more fully and broadly departmental and agency architectures to identify enterprise-wide common services and solutions, with a new emphasis on cloud-computing. The pilots will test a variety of services and delivery modes, provisioning approaches, options, and opportunities that cloud computing brings to Federal Government. Additionally, the multiple approaches will focus on measuring service, cost, and performance; refining and scaling pilots to full capabilities; and providing financial support to accelerate migration”.
I look forward to your assistance on this!
Kevin Jackson
[email protected]
3 Comments
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Kevin – good luck with the meeting. I like your idea of crowd-sourcing suggestions for the meeting! Others will likely have more valuable ideas than mine, so let me just suggest a little thing I’d like Vivek to keep in mind as a guiding principle for open government: Choice.
What do I mean? Government agencies, as they modernize to approach the agility and performance of great commercial IT shops, will be looking to cloud-solution (and other) providers for “business value and choice in a mixed-source world,” in the words of Microsoft’s Teresa Carlson. The agency CIOs and CTOs whom Vivek leads need the flexibility to choose the best tools to accomplish their mission regardless of platform. I’d hate to see a “one-size-fits-all” prescribed solution (even if it were based on Microsoft products!), and I think we’ll all benefit from a balanced approach with appropriate choice and flexibility reserved for smart CIOs.
Good luck and I’m looking forward to reading your report of the meeting! -lewis
Thank you very much for your comments. I agree with your thoughts and personally think that cloud portability will be a huge challenge.
Kevin, that is an awesome opportunity to be able to be part of shaping the future of IT for our Govt. This obviously comes with some great responsibility as well.
I think in order for the govt to adopt such a broad technology there needs to be standards set for interoperability and security first. We all know that standards boards tend to lag behind real world implementations. But in this case the consequences of not going forward with agreed upon security and interop standards is very dangerous.
What has worked with other technologies is lighting a torch underneath the vendors to get together and provide a set of standards before any govt contracts are let. Sometimes providing that carrot (big carrot) is essential to get everyone in the same room. Good luck with your meeting, very cool!